Accessibility at RateLens

1. Our standard

We design and build this website to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA. It’s a standard we’ve chosen and hold ourselves to, and it goes beyond the WCAG 2.1 Level AA benchmark that applies federally under the Accessible Canada Act.

We do it for two reasons. Most of this site is forms and tables, which are the parts that fail accessibility audits most often. And if someone can’t complete a mortgage application here, we’ve failed them, whatever the statute says.

2. What the law requires

Alberta has no accessibility statute setting a web standard. There’s no provincial equivalent of Ontario’s AODA here. That means no legislated conformance level, no compliance deadline and no penalty schedule for an inaccessible website.

What does apply:

• The Alberta Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability and creates a duty to accommodate. It sets no technical benchmark, but it’s a binding obligation and people can bring complaints under it.
• The federal Accessible Canada Act and its WCAG 2.1 AA baseline, which apply to federally regulated organizations. A mortgage professional licensed by RECA isn’t one, so it applies to us as a benchmark, not as law.

So we don’t claim to clear a legal bar that doesn’t exist. WCAG 2.2 AA is the documented standard we point to when someone asks what we did to make this site usable.

3. How we meet the standard

• Every calculator and every step of our application is fully keyboard-operable. Every slider ships with a numeric input beside it, so nothing requires a drag.
• Results are announced to screen readers when they change, as well as redrawn on screen.
• Every input has a visible label (never a placeholder standing in for one), and every error message is associated with its field in text, so it never relies on colour alone.
• Colour is never the only signal. Every status carries an icon or a word as well as a colour, which is also what makes the site readable in greyscale.
• Focus indicators are visible at a minimum 3:1 contrast against both adjacent colours, at 2px.
• Interactive targets are at least 44 by 44 CSS pixels. WCAG 2.2 asks for 24.
• All animation respects your system’s reduced-motion setting, and you can also turn motion off from the footer of any page.
• The site is usable at 200% zoom and at a 320-pixel viewport width without horizontal scrolling. Zoom is never disabled.
• Text meets at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background, including every legal and disclosure block on this site. Compliance text here is set at 12 pixels minimum on an audited colour, never grey-on-grey.

4. Known barriers

Our automated checks are ahead of our manual ones. As of the date at the top of this page:

• A full manual screen-reader pass across every template has not yet been completed. It’s scheduled before launch, and we’ll update this section with whatever it finds and a date for each fix.
• The map on our contact page is a third-party Google embed. We don’t load it until you ask it to load, and we cannot guarantee its internal accessibility. The address, the hours and a directions link are all plain text outside it, so nothing on that page depends on the map.
• Some third-party documents we link to (lender forms, government PDFs) are outside our control. Ask us and we’ll get you the information in a format you can use.

If you find something not listed here, we treat it as a gap in our testing. Tell us and we’ll add it to this list and fix it.

5. Tell us about a barrier

If you have difficulty using any part of this site, or you need information from it in another format, contact us. We’ll help you directly and fix the problem.

• Email accessibility@ratelens.ca
• Phone (825) 797-5417. Hours: Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Mountain Time. Closed Saturday and Sunday.
• Mail RateLens, 4990 92 Ave NW #105, Edmonton, AB T6B 2V4

We respond to accessibility feedback within two business days and aim to resolve reported barriers within 15 business days. If a fix will take longer than that, we’ll tell you why and give you a date. In the meantime, we’ll help you do whatever you were trying to do another way.

6. Accessible formats

On request, we’ll provide any information on this site (including rate information, calculator results and application documents) in an accessible format or with communication supports, at no additional cost. That includes reading a rate sheet to you over the phone, sending a large-print or plain-text version of a calculator breakdown, or completing an application together by phone instead of online.

See also our Privacy Policy, our Terms of Use and our complaints process.